Domain names are purchased for 1, 3, 5 or 10 years. They can be purchased from a variety of sources, so you can search for the best price. You can also purchase more than one domain name and then have them all "point" to the same website. To find out whether your domain name and what extension (such as .com or .net) are available, you can go to http://www.networksolutions.com. If your name is available, you do NOT have to purchase it from Network Solutions, but can search on the Internet for other domain sellers.
This is where your website files will be kept. To find an appropriate ISP, you need to know whether you will be offering a shopping cart, whether you want the ISP to set up your website or provide you a template, and whether you have special programming (such as calculations, database use, etc.). Once you find an ISP, you need to provide the ISP's NIC address to the company where you purchased your domain name.
Any time you change your ISP, you need to provide your domain name company with a new NIC address.
Search engines find websites by searching for key words in the tags, in the words on your web pages (especially the home page), and in the tags of the images on your web pages. If you do not have or tags or if you have few words on your home page, it is not likely that your website will be found "organically" - i.e. without paying for a sponsored site.
You can check to see if your web pages have these tags by going to each page, and in your browser, under View, select Source. Then using Edit, search for meta and alt=.
Which Keywords to Use
Google has a free Keyword Tool at https://ads.google.com/home/ that can help you target which words to use in your tags and in the text on your website. You can enter a description of your business or proposed text for your website and Google will give you ideas for key words. When you use this tool, the larger number is not necessarily the better choice. For example, when we used this tool for the website "Tools for Business Success", the results included the word "business" as a possible key word. Google said there were 68 million requests for that word in one month. Yet, it is unlikely that 68 million people are looking for the "Tools for Business Success" - this is too broad a word. It would be better to use other words to target to a smaller group that is more likely to be directly interested.
The Keyword Tool will also show you how much advertiser competition there is for each keyword. The higher the competition, the higher the price to achieve a high search ranking.
Click on the image below to see an example of the Keyword Tool.
Website Grader, at websitegrader.com is a free search engine optimization tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates website traffic, Search Engine Optimization, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides a report with tips on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.
Click here to go to websitegrader.com tool.
From the next tool called Enleaf, you can analize other Search Engine Optimization techniques.
Click here to go to enleaf.com tool.
Another resources that helps you with your website optimization is below.
Accepting money
If you want to sell items on the Internet, you need a way that your customers can pay. Traditionally, this has involved three steps:
PayPal and Square are two companies that have simplified the process for online and mobile purchases.
Note: All credit card processors charge a per-transaction fee which is usually 2 to 3% of the total transaction.
Marketing on the Internet:
Here are 3 tools to help you:
Pay per Click Return on Investment Calculator
Google Analytics is a free set of tools that can help you see how many people are visiting your website where your visitors came from the search words used to find your website which pages they visited and how long they stayed.
To use Google Analytics, you will need to put some code on each of your web pages.
Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/.
Click on Sign Up Now. Google will generate some code which you need to put at the end of each of the web pages that you want to track (put it before the /body tag).
Google will then begin to monitor your site. You can see the results by logging into Google Analytics.
Click on the image below to see an example of the report that you will get: